A Brief Introduction to Stochastic Processes

Abstract

This chapter was a very brief introduction to the basic concepts of the stochastic processes including the definition of a stochastic process, a discrete-time and continuous-time stochastic process, state space, i.i.d. stochastic process, stopping time, and the hitting time of a process to a state. Some typical examples and problems including the daily stock prices of a company, and the evolution of the population of a country have been provided to clarify the basic concepts.